The Bach House in Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany, is a museum dedicated to the composer Johann Sebastian Bach who was born in the city. On its 600 m2 it displays around 250 original exhibits, among them a Bach music autograph. The core of the building complex is a half-timbered house, ca. 550 years old, which was mistakenly identified as Bach's birth house in the middle of the 19th century. In 1905, the Leipzig-based Neue Bachgesellschaft acquired the building. In 1907, it was opened as the first Bach museum.
History
The Bach family was a widespread musical family, with members working in musical professions throughout Thuringia since the first half of the 16th century until the end of the 18th century. Already in 1665, Johann Christoph Bach was appointed organist at St. George's in Eisenach.
Bach's father Johann Ambrosius Bach accepted a position as the Eisenach council's Haußmann (city music director) in 1671. The family first rented rooms in a half-timbered house in the Rittergasse 11 (directly south of today's museum garden), and owned at the time by the city's forests administrator Balthasar Schneider. Since only property owners could claim citizenship, in 1674 Johann Ambrosius Bach bought a house in the Fleischgass (probably Lutherstraße 35), its location was 100 metres to the north of today's museum. The original house in the Fleischgass is no longer standing, it was replaced twice over in the 18th and 19th centuries. Identifying today the exact location of Bach's birth is almost hopeless since people wishing to become citizens did not always move into the places they acquired for that purpose, and instead rented them out. Based on the location of Ambrosius Bach's first rooms at the building in the Rittergasse and his ownership of the property in the Lutherstraße, one may conjecture that Bach's family lived in this area of the city and so at least very close to the location of the present-day museum.
Johann Sebastian Bach was born on 21 March 1685 in Eisenach and baptized two days later in St. George's Church. He spent the first 10 years of his life at Eisenach. The family's musical tradition brought him into close contact with music and the musical profession. His father early taught him to play string and wind instruments. At St. George's, Bach could witness his cousin Johann Christoph Bach playing the organ, later his favourite instrument. From 1692 until 1695, Johann Sebastian Bach attended the Latin school at Eisenach and joined its chorus musicus; for its members music lessons were included in the school's timetable on four days of the week. On 1 May 1694, Bach's mother Elisabeth Bach died, on 20 February 1695 also Bach's father Ambrosius died. In July 1695, Johann Sebastian and his brother Johann Jacob left Eisenach to live with the family of their older brother Johann Christoph in Ohrdruf.
1456 to 1800
The historical Bach House is one of the oldest residential buildings in Eisenach. It originally consisted of two buildings, of which the eastern part was built in 1456 and the western part in 1458. At around 1611, both were joined. As was normal with the Ackerbürgerhäuser (burghers' houses) of that time, the ground floor was used for agricultural purposes: today's instrument hall may have been used as a barn, and the rooms next to the stairs for cattle and horses. In the museum, a cowbell from 1688 found in the Bach House garden reminds of this past. In the first floor of the building, a Renaissance glass window frame and the timber panelling of the living room now decorated as Composing Studio still bear witness of the citizen status of the house's former occupants. At the time of Bach's birth it was owned by Heinrich Börstelmann, headmaster of the Latin School. In 1746, the family of Caroline Amalie Rausch née Bach moved into the building and lived there until 1779. Caroline Amalie was the daughter of Bach's second cousin and friend Johann Bernhard Bach and sister to Johann Ernst Bach, a student of Bach at Leipzig and then court music director at Eisenach.